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I know we all want something for free but is it really free if it is stolen? Read my comment to a BBC article talking about the entertainments industry push to stop piracy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/news/20110420_search_piracy.shtml#comments

Read my comment to a Fader article describing Iceage White Rune “disaffected fuck you that doesn’t come from being bored, but instead comes from being perpetually dissatisfied” Sam Hockley- Smith

David Chang interview at KCRW  inspired to listen to ” I see the Darkness” by Bonnie Billy.  Read my response from the link below.

http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/gd/gd110406david_chang

RockOutNy on Stereogum’s Big Freedia review

http://stereogum.com/672081/big-freedia-almost-famous-stereogum-premiere/mp3s/#comment-7340611

I first saw this  cover posted on Huffington Post but ignored it thinking it would be a cutsie little girl signing with her father.  Touching if your are the parent or another family member.  I was looking at my twitter page and saw it re-posted by Rough Trades Records.  At first I did not know it was the same clip and when I saw two I had an initial urge to X out of the page but I suppressed the desire and gave the two a chance. Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros acoustic “Home” makes me want to be in love and I would have been a swift executioner if their cover was sucky but damn that little girl can sing and she has charisma, with her arm propped on her fathers guitar like it ain’t no thing.

I wear tight pants and low tops, showing off the goods but when my mother was in high school she was not allowed to wear pants until she was a senior in high school.  Compared to women of  an early time or in some third world countries I appear to have many freedoms or equalities, but the world still needs to be educated.  Music and art is the medium for Kathleen Hanna.

As the  role of teacher she  is taking what people are passionate about(music) and made an archive for NYU The Riot Grrrl Collection at Fales Library.   In Kathleen’s interview with Fadar she says  “a big part of what we were trying to do was create a continuum between the second wave to what became the third wave. So it wasn’t like, we hate the second wavers and they were anti-sex and we’re pro-sex. It was more like, we’re trying to recast what you’re doing through our punk rock colored glasses and make it make sense to us.”  The key to learning is making it relevant to today but still paying homage to the past.    Create something meaningful and the message will shine through.  There’s no need to burn your bras girls.

Fact-Check the Rhyme

So evidently Yale University Press has published The Anthology of Rap, which according to Slate’s Paul Devlin “sets out to capture the evolution of rap lyrics through what its editors consider representatives examples”. The volume includes contributions from Henry Lous Gates Jr., Chuck D, and Common in addition to transcribed lyrics from some of rap music’s most prolific lyricists.

Here lies the problem however. As Slate reports there are numerous transcription errors caused either by the rappers using slang or purposeful mispronunciation or the authors at Yale University Press not understanding the real meaning behind the lyrics. Some examples from Paul Devlin:

—50 Cent, here on “Ghetto Qua’ran,” clearly says, “From Gerald Wallace to Baby Wise, don’t be surprised/ Of how freely I throw out names of guys who dealt with pies.” The song relays the history of the drug trade in south Jamaica Queens in the 1980s and 1990s. (A pie is a large quantity of cocaine.) He does not say, as the editors have it, “From George Wallace to Baby Wise, don’t be surprised/ Of how freely I thought of names of guys who dealt with pies.” If he wanted to say George instead of Gerald he would have done so. (The image of George Wallace, the segregationist former Alabama governor, dealing drugs in Queens is an amusing one, to say the least.) And 50 says “throw out,” meaning to list publicly, not “thought of,” which implies to consider internally.

—Ghostface Killah, here in “Daytona 500,” is referring to a prominent New York radio personality named Vaughan Harper when he says “voice be mellow like Vaughan Harper radio barber.” He is not saying “voice be metal like Von Harper,” as the editors have it. There is no such thing as a “Von Harper” with a metal voice. Vaughan Harper, with a mellow voice, was a host on New York’s WBLS, 107.5 FM, at one time a popular hip-hop and R&B station.

Another issue with the anthology is the fact that it does not specify in the title that this is Yale UP own version of a rap music anthology. As the work omits many acts that could be considered vital to the history of the genre, this should be made more clear especially since this is the first and currently only volume of its kind.

Perhaps the history of a music genre is better left for people to learn about from cultural experience and not learned from a book. Depending of your geographical location, surroundings, and other localized and cultural variables the entire rap world will have different major players, history, style, and purpose.

The author (of the Slate article) does a really good job on calling the book out on mistakes, omissions, and issues. Give it a read on the link at the top of this entry.

The editors will argue that they are the compilers and it is up to them to choose what to include:
from the always reliable (i’m serious) Wikipedia “An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler.”

Yeah but come on… they should identify themselves with more effort rather then simply calling it The Anthology of Rap.

I have found the perfect site for people who are always itching for hot new music.  The Hype.  This easy to use site looks for blogs that have mp3 links to songs.  Then Hype finds out, which ones are the latest and most popular.  The site also has a radio feature that allows you to play songs from previous weeks.  So far, all of the external links upload.  Plus, the sign up was a brief affair, it did  not ask for my address or phone number.

The first five songs I listened to under the popular tab were DJ’s remixes (not really my thing). Black Keys was the 9th song,  I loved the infusion of bluegrass rock and rap.    The song came from  AK JIGGA’s blog ,which was found by Hype.  I usually agree with his  feeling towards white rappers, that I am “predisposed to generally dislike white rappers”.  But the rapping was authentic and did not sound like an  imitation.  Hype exposes you to songs that are hot on the web, not necessarily “main stream,”

I highly recommend checking this site out, you won’t be disappointed.

uJam is a new service that lets you create music and melodies by transforming sounds made through singing, humming, whistling, or just noise-making into a corresponding melody created in your choice of instruments.

It basically turns crap into something closer to “gold”.

Anyone without any ability to play guitar can now simply sing the song that the guitar track would go on and uJam will transform the recorded voice into a guitar hitting the same notes. You can also edit the tracks by auto tuning, tempo and pitch changing… you get the drift.

The founders are planning to market this as the amateur’s recording studio (which it is), and possibly audio greeting “card” platform.

Is this a cool technology? Well it is fully web-based, and it can make you sound like a Marimba (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimba), so it’s a yes in my book.

The concern here is that social media sharing capabilities will encourage people to share and show all their friends their latest amateur music creation. uJam could flood the Internet with mediocre recordings.

How will real musicians feel about this product? It will be a while until we find out since the service is still in Beta (invite-only Alpha actually, according to them), so technically only techies have access (like myself).
Does this have a chance to pose a realistic threat to musicians-of-trade?

I saw this comment on a related article from TC user sYgnal:

“Come on… That’s not fair! You shouldn’t be displaying the secret technology that most mainstream “artists” use to make their “music” nowadays. Looks like no more award shows for Kanye….*smirk* “

Fortunately uJams’s rise to success still faces one hurdle. Music licensing. uJam could be commiting copyright infringement everytime users sing and edit popular songs.

from DoobyBrain.com

Supposedly “Atomic Tom had their instruments stolen…” They should make the money to buy new ones with a few viral videos like this one. Although I’m pretty sure they are having more success now with a few iPhones, a subway car and YouTube than they were before.